Currently, general efforts are underway to reduce electricity consumption by computers in order to promote so-called “green” technologies and to address global climate change. But, in addition to these long-term goals, reduced power consumption can provide an immediate savings to the business owner. Not only will a reduction in power used by a computer system mean a lower electric bill for the computer system itself, but also a reduction power will mean lower cooling costs for the computer system. For enterprises managing enormous data centers, a reduction in the power needed to cool racks of computers can be very significant. For these enterprises, a reduction in cooling capacity also means less cooling infrastructure needed and less real estate needed for the data center.
Accordingly, it is generally desirable to conserve power in a computer storage cluster in order to save money and reduce the cooling necessary. But, in a storage cluster in which client applications are constantly writing to the cluster and reading from it, and in which the storage cluster itself is assessing its own digital object integrity and making necessary copies of digital objects, it can be challenging to devise a power conservation scheme.
Therefore, a technique and system are desired that will reduce power consumption in a computer storage cluster while still allowing client applications the necessary access and will uphold object integrity within the cluster.